1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for informing an economical speed of a vehicle and a method thereof, and more particularly, to an apparatus for informing an economical speed that informs a driver of the economical speed for economical driving at an intersection with a plurality of traffic signal devices in the city, and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
The gases causing the greenhouse effect of the various gases in the atmosphere are called greenhouse gases.
As the greenhouse gases, there are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, Freon gas, and ozone. Although vapor is the most responsible for causing the natural greenhouse effect, a representative greenhouse gas causing global warming is carbon dioxide.
Since the latter half of 20th century, global warming has rapidly progressed, unusual weather such that localized heavy rain, drought, typhoon etc. has been rapidly increased. If the present level of contamination continues, it is expected that the greenhouse gas emissions throughout the world will reach a level that seriously threatens mankind and the ecosystem in the sooner future.
In particular, due to the rapid increase of vehicles over the years, numerous questions about adverse effects on the environmental pollution and global warming due to the exhaust gas (particularly, carbon dioxide) from vehicles have been brought up. Accordingly, various efforts are being made at present in the transportation industry to reduce the greenhouse gas. As one of the efforts, a lot of efforts are made to improve fuel efficiency.
As one of the efforts, in order to improve fuel efficiency and reduce the exhaust gas from vehicles, vehicles have been equipped with an idle stop control device (or called an automatic engine start/restart device or an engine idle stop & go) which automatically stops the idle engine when the vehicles stop in driving in a city, such as waiting for a light, and then restarts the engine to restart the vehicles in a predetermined time.
By preventing unnecessary idling during a stop using the idle stop control device described above, in addition to reducing the fuel cost, environmental pollution and global warming are minimized by reducing the exhaust gas of vehicles.
When driving a vehicle downtown of a city and passing intersections at several times to get to the destination, most drivers don't know at how much speed they have to drive to start the vehicles stopped at the red light of a traffic signal device. Accordingly, there is a tendency to rapidly accelerate the vehicle by strongly pressing down the acceleration pedal.
However, a method of reducing unnecessary fuel consumption due to rapid acceleration etc. when driving between intersections has not been proposed yet. For example, drivers who drive a vehicle between intersections in a driving course to the destination cannot guess the economical speed because they don't know the information on the light of the next traffic signal device, such that they frequently make unnecessary rapid acceleration. Accordingly, in addition to increase of the exhaust gas of vehicles, there is a problem of deteriorating the fuel efficiency of the vehicles.